


I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not responsible for an inability to succeed in an impossible situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war

**Author's Note:**

> Title from December 3, 2002, by Juliana Spahr

Kimball thinks, in the indulgently ferocious privacy of dark circle high-caffeine pre-dawns, that one of the things that makes her a good leader is her ability to connect with her people on a political and personal level. She doesn't raise her voice in anger. It's something she learned early in life from teachers too frightened of ideas like conflict and justifiable anger that they'd drilled complacency and diplomacy into the legions of eight-year-olds still struggling to add four digit numbers without a calculator. Now she knows the history of Chorus politics well enough that she understands the pervasive atmosphere of obedience that the government was creating even then, but at the time she'd taken every well-meant word to heart and spent the next seven years of her life finding ways to filter her anger through a soft-spoken, unrelentingly reasonable form of warfare.

She grew up, of course. Grew up into her voice and her anger and grew up into a war, learned how to put power behind her words, learned how to cut across a conversation or an argument or a battlefield with a single word. She realized that she had never been complacent, she'd just gotten good at masking it. Yet she still can not bring herself to raise her voice in anger, feels the stinging reminders of childhood classrooms holding her back each time the words build in her throat. She thinks there's a metaphor there, or a representation of the ways she has been conditioned to believe that to be loud is to be disruptive, unreasonable. But she also thinks of falling asleep to her neighbours, and later her parents, arguing. Knows precisely the shift in the air before a voice raised in anger becomes a fist, or a bottle. Remembers the way the police officer screamed at her aunt and uncle to get down on the dirty pavement with their unarmed hands above their heads while she crouched, helpless, behind a bench, and a year later the way the police hollered their way through her university res, pounding on doors at three in the morning while sleepy students stumbled into obedient lines against the walls. She thinks she is the leader of an arguably successful revolution and probably that is goddamn disruptive enough.

Kimball doesn't really realize that she unnerves Carolina until about three months in. It's been a spectacularly bad day-- negotiations have been stalled for three weeks and Kimball had barely avoided a knife to the gut courtesy of the teenager standing next to her at breakfast, and she's had the same dull throbbing pain at her temples for four days and it's starting to make her nauseous every time she moves too quickly or walks into a brightly lit room. She's standing by the window, watching the morning rainstorm and sucking in fresh air and also standing directly in front of the open glass because she refuses to let another assassination attempt send her scuttling behind locked doors and red tape. She cannot repeat the patterns of the very people she fought to stop.

"I have a suggestion," says Carolina. "You're not going to like it."

Kimball brings a hand up to press at the base of her skull where the muscles have hardened into steal cables. "Yes?"

Carolina hesitates. It's odd-- over their time working together she has been quick to offer hundreds of suggestions that Kimball disagrees with, sometimes arguing her point of view with a single-minded passion that edges on frustrating. Carolina clears her throat. "Give in on clause C and D on economic sustainability."

"The hospitals," Kimball says evenly. "You want me to sell out my people's right to live."

She spins from the window, hand moving up from her neck to rake through her hair, other hand landing solidly on the desk.

Carolina flinches.

Kimball's started scanning the room for threats before it hits her that Carolina's reaction is because of her. Carolina's been standing at parade rest, which is a habit common enough in their discussions that Kimball has already been trying to work out the correlation pattern. Her face has gone blank, eyes straight ahead, like she's already preparing herself for a blow against which she won't defend. It's deeply unsettling, burrowing down and carving a hollow place in the pit of Kimball's stomach. Slowly, Kimball drops both hands to her sides.

"Ok, Carolina," she says, keeping her voice as mild and reassuring as she can without slipping into patronizing. "I don't like it, but we're not getting anywhere with our current strategy. Walk me through your reasoning."

Carolina looks surprised, very briefly, and then the moment is gone and she's got an entire goddamn flowchart with colour-coded sticky notes and a list of supporting articles spread out across Kimball's desk. The explanation takes an hour. There are three moments in which Kimball feels hopelessly naive, two in which she wants to grab Carolina and shake her until her political viewpoints are less fucking unquestioningly federalist, and one particularly unfortunate typo that sends them both into fits of slightly hysterical laughter for at least five minutes. When they're done, Carolina gathers up the papers with a sigh.

"I haven't convinced you."

Kimball shakes her head. "You haven't. But thank you for trying."

Carolina leaves. Later that evening, Kimball walks past a Fed colonel screaming in Carolina’s face, fists clenched and spittle flying from his lips while Carolina stares him down like something she's scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Kimball's mind starts yet another dataset marked 'Carolina'.

A month later, Carolina takes a team up north to follow up on the rumours of an extremist Fed splinter group. She comes back with a third of the soldiers she left with and no new information beyond the fact that the extremists exist and are far better armed than previously suspected. Carolina gives Kimball the report in person as soon as they get back. Her back is straight and her words are clipped and detailed and she calls Kimball 'Sir' and does not once comment on the tragic state of Kimball's latest potted plant. Kimball isn't quite sure what to say-- platitudes feel ridiculous for a woman who was quite literally a super-soldier in the Great War. Carolina's got that calculatedly blank defense up again and it is still disconcerting, because Carolina has seen and done more than Kimball will probably ever do, Carolina could kill Kimball where she sits without a second thought, Carolina's got the sort of emotional fortitude that becomes frighteningly incredible if you think about it too closely.

"Ok," Kimball says. "Well, we know more than we did before. We can start preparing for an offensive. And... Thank you for getting as many of our people home as you could."

Carolina nods stiffly and remains silent. For the first time since the early days of their acquaintance she waits to be dismissed.

They don't have dinner together as is their custom when nobody's in meetings (Carolina was dragged kicking and screaming into the law enforcement working group and she now runs it with an iron fist while Kimball tries not to be concerned in the background) and the next day Kimball only catches a glimpse of Carolina across the street on her way to speak to thousands of high school students. The next day, Carolina stops by her office to drop off a roll of blueprints. She's quiet, and while the stiffly strict military courtesy has gone she is still professionally distant. Kimball catches her staring in horrified fascination at the potted plant (Kimball tries, ok, they just keep dying) but she doesn't comment.

By the third day, Kimball is starting to wonder if she's done something to deserve this distance. Carolina doesn't strike her as the sort of person who deals with personal problems by ignoring the problem, but the only other explanation she can think of is that Carolina is guilty over the deaths of the soldiers on her last mission. It's plausible, but Carolina's a professional and while there's no doubt that she cares about her people she is also pragmatic in the honesties of war. Kimball cannot call this peacetime, not when the war is fought as often over conference tables and email as it was with guns and fists. The Feds and the New Republic have both been using words as weapons since the beginning, and they've been effective on both sides.

She finds Carolina in one of the training rooms at the military base. She checks the schedule out of habit, but Carolina's only been at it for an hour, and this is her first session of the day. Entirely reasonable. Kimball still considers putting an end to Carolina's nighttime training binges to be one of her larger accomplishments in the past six months. She tosses down a yoga mat in the room next door to Carolina and works through a basic series of poses, keeping an eye on the blur of released energy that is Carolina on the other side of the window. They finish at the same time, and Kimball falls into step with Carolina in the hallway, passing soldiers who offer salutes and greetings.

"Would you like to talk about why you've been avoiding me?" Kimball asks once they're outside. She feels small, unarmoured beside Carolina's hard teal shell.

"I haven't been--"

"Don't lie about something this obvious, please," Kimball says firmly. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No," Carolina says quickly. "It's not-- I just wasn't sure if you'd want to see me. If I was allow-- After the mission up north."

"That wasn't your fault."

"I should've been better," Carolina says automatically. Kimball huffs out a breath.

"You know what my answer to that is going to be."

"That's not the point, anyway," Carolina says. "I fucked up. I got your people killed and more importantly I didn't get any of the information you wanted."

"You didn't exactly have a choice in that," Kimball says. "You said the attack came out of nowhere."

"That's right," Carolina agrees. "But the fact remains, the mission was not a success."

Kimball walks in silence for a few minutes, heading back towards the New Republic HQ. She doesn't want to say the wrong thing. "You've told me about the leaderboard during Project freelancer," she says finally. "But you recognize that... normal military operations don't operate like that."

"Maybe not as blatantly," Carolina says dryly.

Kimball feels a little sick to her stomach. "Not at all. Or at least they shouldn't. Have you been waiting all week for the other shoe to drop?"

"You didn't reprimand me when I gave my report."

"Because there was no reason to."

"The mission was a failure."

Kimball rubs her eyes, almost trips over a curb. "There is a difference between a mission not being successful and the person in charge fucking up. You are not responsible for an inability to succeed in an impossible situation." She takes a breath, considers her next words carefully before she throws them out into the space between them. "That doesn't just apply to military operations, either. It's a pretty standard life rule across the board."

Carolina exhales. "I should have found another way. There was a goal, and I didn't achieve it. It's a pretty simple equation."

Kimball stops in the deserted lobby of the building, turns to face Carolina when the other woman slows beside her. "It's an over-simplified equation. Work on considering the factors that were out of your control, look at it realistically. I can work with you on that whenever you'd like."

"You’re busy," Carolina says dismissively.

"We're also friends. I care about you."

Carolina's shoulders hunch a bit. "That's very kind of you. You're doing remarkable work here, I don't know if anyone tells you that."

Kimball is a little taken-aback. "Thank you."

"You're good with people," Carolina shrugs. "Charismatic. And calm."

"I try," Kimball says. "This is important to me, and I know it's important to every person I represent as well."

Carolina nods. "It shows." She laughs under her breath. "You’re unpredictable, though. Still trying to figure you out."

"How so?" Kimball asks, honestly curious. "Even my plants die on schedule."

Carolina snorts. "I'm not sure when you'll snap," she says lightly, beginning to walk again. "Always so calm and I've yet to figure out what's going to be your trigger."

Kimball feels that same pit of unease slide back into place in her stomach. She remembers watching a video of Leonard Church shortly after meeting Carolina, grainy coverage of a confident, charming man giving a keynote at a conference over a decade ago. Remembers the way he'd smiled through the challenging questions from the audience, smiled through the technical failure of the microphone and lights, and the flash fire of blistering rage unleashed on a protester just outside the hotel. The video had been low-quality and far away, so she couldn't hear the protester's words, but he'd been holding a sign reading 'Organic life is real life' and the way the Dr. Church had turned on him had spoken of a sort of uncontrolled animal violence. She’d forgotten about that video until now.

"Carolina," she says. Carolina is half way up the stairs, but she stops and turns at Kimball's voice. There are a hundred things that Kimball wants to say, wants to promise, but most of them she knows will not go over well and some of them she is uncertain of her own ability to offer. She stares up at Carolina and alongside the super-soldier, the tactician, the friend, she sees truly for the first time something more, something that makes Kimball want to bow her head in respect and wrap herself protectively around Carolina simultaneously. Carolina stands, quiet and attentive and waiting for whatever Kimball has to say and the realization of what she can only call power and its accompanying responsibility leaves her breathless.

"There's no other shoe," Kimball says finally, words for once feeling inadequate and clumsy on her tongue. "When I said that I care about you, that's not conditional on anything. That's... what caring means. What it should mean. And I promise that I will not snap. I promise I will keep you safe, in that respect."

It's a lot to promise, but Kimball's promised an entire revolution. She figures she's probably up to it.


End file.
